


If You Need To, Keep Time On Me

by bogfable



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Amethyst helps, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Jasper needs to let herself CRY, Pearl is mentioned - Freeform, Sad with a Happy Ending, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22231252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bogfable/pseuds/bogfable
Summary: i wrote most of this before SU Future came out… TW for a brief mention of su/cide ideation (I think. Just to be safe). Nothing bad happens from it, it’s just..Jasper having a breakdown.. It has a happy ending though.---Amethyst found Jasper on the clifftop just outside of Beach City.She sat on the grass by the edge. Her head tilted to the slowly appearing stars.From where she stood Amethyst wondered if it was right to disturb her. If maybe she should go back to the temple and just let everyone know that she’d found Jasper. Steven was worried after all. So was Peridot.“Hey,” Amethyst said softly as she reached Jasper’s side.
Relationships: Amethyst & Jasper (Steven Universe)
Kudos: 23





	If You Need To, Keep Time On Me

**Author's Note:**

> bwoop bwoop .. title is from a Fleet Foxes song..that is just the title of the sonnggggg baby

Amethyst found Jasper on the clifftop just outside of Beach City. 

She sat on the grass by the edge. Her head tilted to the slowly appearing stars. 

From where she stood Amethyst wondered if it was right to disturb her. If maybe she should go back to the temple and just let everyone know that she’d found Jasper. Steven was worried after all. So was Peridot. 

“Hey,” Amethyst said softly as she reached Jasper’s side. 

Jasper startled and glared at Amethyst, her eyes dimly aglow in the fading sunlight. They weren’t as fiery as Amethyst remembered. Not quite so harsh. They were weary, soft amber, water as they caught the light. They were tired.

“It’s just me,” said Amethyst. She sat down, careful not to tread on Jasper’s hair. 

“I know it’s _you_.”

A small smile turned up the corners of Amethyst’s mouth but she kept it to herself. Besides her Jasper had tensed. She curled her knees to her chest, holding on tight, knuckles all pale. 

“Hey, Jas,” Amethyst tried again. “I can go if you want. But you have to promise you’ll come back.”

Jasper shifted, resting her cheek on her knees. “Why?” she asked sharply.

“Why what?”

“Why should I come back?” 

“To hang out. Or just talk,” replied Amethyst, quiet. “Me and Peridot and Steven started planting a garden at the lighthouse. On top of the temple. We could use some help.”

Jasper sighed, breath shuddering.

The sun was low on the horizon, sinking into the sea. Even when it was gone there’d still be light for a while after. A strange, in-between time of shadowless ground and indefinite edges.

Pearl had called this time _the gloaming_ once, before laughing in her polite Pearl-ish way and telling a confused Steven that the more common word was _dusk._ Pearl said that she thought _the gloaming_ sounded romantic and _wonderfully mysterious_.

Amethyst welcomed the cool ocean air that stirred her hair, ghosted the fuzz on her cheeks. 

Besides her Jasper gave a trembling sigh.

“I _can’t_ ,” she said eventually, voice strained. She rested her forehead on her knees.

Amethyst heard a cry, muffled and secret. The kind of cry that is so desperately held inside that when it’s finally let out it won’t stop. That was exactly how it was.

Jasper cried, curled up and closed off. She was trying so hard to stop it, trembling all over. Tears and shuddered breaths escaped her. 

Amethyst swallowed the lump in her throat and placed her hand on the corruption scars that circled Jasper’s shoulder. Jasper froze.

“You gotta let yourself cry, Jas,” Amethyst said, hushed. 

From beneath her wild hair, Jasper peered at her earth-sister as she knelt besides her, brow all knit and worried.

“I just—” She stopped herself.

Amethyst patted Jasper’s shoulder, gently rubbed a circle over her scar. She said: “It’s okay, sis… Talk to me.” 

No one spoke for a full minute, perhaps longer. The silence waited, not tense. Patient. 

Jasper worried she might fall apart if she spoke again. That she might corrupt.

Finally, she spoke: 

“There is _so much_. All of this.” 

Jasper forced down a sob. She wanted to tear herself apart and be a thoughtless monster again. Only blind, only running.

“So much…I just want it to stop.”

Amethyst stared up at Jasper, her hand still on her shoulder. The clench in her chest kept her breathless, speechless. Her head emptied itself of all the reassurance she’d given Steven or Pearl or Peridot. This was different. It was scary. 

“Oh, Stars,” Jasper cried into her hands. She curled inward, hair falling over her shoulders. Loose strands curled in the sea-wind. 

Amethyst got to her feet, wrapped her arms around Jasper’s shoulders as they shook. “Hey, sis? Let’s go back to the temple —I have my own room. It’s private. We can take a nap.”

From behind her hands Jasper yelled, “I don’t know what that is! I don’t know!”

_Oh._ Amethyst smacked herself in the forehead. 

“It just means you get to chill,” she said. “You just relax and close your eyes, Jas.”

Jasper didn’t reply. Only choked on a held sob, and coughed.

“Dude, let yourself cry. Please,” said Amethyst. “Get it all out…You’ll feel so much better…Then we can go hang out in my room and watch wrestling or something…You’ll like wrestling. It’s basically people beating each other up.” 

Amethyst didn’t think that Jasper wanted to be lectured about the true art and performance of wrestling at the moment, so she didn’t mention in.

Above, the stars were blinking, clear in the near-black sky. It was almost dark and below the cliff Beach City was a grid, a little gathering, of lights.

Amethyst sighed, tired. “You don’t gotta hold yourself together like this, Jas.”

Jasper hissed a breath against her knees, pulled to her chest. 

And then she let herself fall apart. 

Amethyst held onto her all the while, hugging her. Jasper bowed her head against Amethyst’s and burrowed into the hair that fell over her shoulder. As she held onto Jasper, Amethyst could feel each massive sob in her own chest, in the fur on the ends of her ears, in the pit of her stomach. She felt her own tears slip down her face. They slipped off her chin and into Jasper’s hair.

“It was all a lie…” whispered Jasper, hoarsely. “All of it.”

She pulled away, laughing halfheartedly. She wore a crooked smile and tear-soaked cheeks. And laughed again, almost as if in disbelief, as she lay back on the grass. 

After a moment Amethyst crawled up besides her and leant over her face. “Y’alright, sis?”

Jasper hadn’t stopped crying, not entirely, but now she wiped her eyes between slightly loopy, breathy laughter. “Bless the Stars,” she sighed. 

“Psh, _bless the Stars_ ,” Amethyst repeated. “That makes you sound super old.”

Jasper huffed a laugh.

The sky was completely dark now, black on the horizon where the sun had sunken into the sea. In the moonlight the grass was indigo, everything just shapes.

“Can you see in the dark?” asked Amethyst, leant against Jasper’s side. 

“Yes.” Her voice was quietly rough.

“What’s it look like? Is it totally dope?”

Jasper sat herself up on her elbows, still rubbing her eyes. When she took away her hand Amethyst could see the faint glow in them, like the embers in the wood-burning stove back at the temple.

Jasper huffed, “I don’t know. It’s just dark but I know where shit is.” 

“Dope.” Amethyst got to her feet, groaning as she did. “I just sniff. T’see where the snacks are at.”

She reached a hand down to Jasper, who hadn’t replied, and waved it a little.

“Want to go watch wrestling?” she asked.

Jasper took her hand in a firm, slightly tear-dampened grip and slowly got to her feet, like a lumbering old beast. She exhaled heavily, dusted off her behind.

“Sure.”


End file.
